Suffer the Flesh (4 page)

Staring at her naked in the center of the room.

James approached and eyed her body. Despite what they were doing to her, she felt a fierce embarrassment, a hatred of being seen naked. Her thick stomach exposed, heavy breasts, fat thighs.

He reached up, flicked a nippleand then lowered his head to it and sucked. “See? This could have been simple. This was supposed to be introductions, a tour of the facility. But you’ve failed your first test, Zoey. You just keep disobeying. Why is that?”

She moaned, stared into emerald eyes that seemed so kind. So deceptive, so horrible the secrets they hid so well. This was not a kind man, this was a psychopath.

“Answer me!” he yelled, veins bulging on his neck like thick rope, and roughly squeezed a nipple.

She screamed, tried to back away from him. “I don’t know! I’m

sorry!”

He calmed down, smiled again. Hefted both breasts in his hands. “You don’t know.” Kneaded them like mounds of dough. “How does this feel? Good?”

She looked away. “No.”

He fondled them, squeezed and kissed and licked. Then he let go and walked away. “Okay,” he said, but not to her.

Two men approached her and took over where James had left off.

One in front grabbed her breasts, flicked the nipples with his tongue. Reached down and slid his fingers between her lips, prying them open, his thumb massaging her clit. She tried to back away but bumped into the man behind her. She opened her mouth—

James shook his head. “Not a word, Zoey. Not one single word.”

Anger overshadowed the embarrassment, but she couldn’t react.

Heat spread on her cheeks. Something hard poked her, rubbed against her ass. Hands slid between her legs, moist now because of the bastard playing with her breasts and clit. She gasped as the one behind her slipped his fingers inside her pussy and finger-fucked her and then followed with his cock, pushing himself from behind. Awkward, painful. He rammed the inside of her vagina at a bizarre angle, unable to insert himself in fully. Rough touches. His thick arms wrapped around her stomach, held her in a death grip.

The man in front sucked her tits, his lips hanging from one like a bloated parasite. He kicked her ankles further apart and guided his swollen member inside her. She tried to move away, to bring her legs closer together. His stomach pressed hers, and his fingers

pried apart her labia. Pushed hard against her, fighting for space in her already full vagina. Pushed harder until the tearing pain made her shriek, made her swing her arms and shove her torso against him. But he was inside her now, fucking against the other cock, stretching her tortured canal, digging deeply within agonized places. She writhed, tried to push them out. Burning, shredding pain. Hatred and shame made a grotesque marriage.

They battered harder, faster, sliced her vagina raw, their fucking a practiced rhythm. Seconds apart they came, grunted, leaned into her. A soupy blood and cum concoction tricked down her thigh.

“Good job, guys,” James said, clapping them on the shoulders. He held Zoey’s breast. “Think you’re finally learning?”

Before she could stop herself, before she gave herself even a split second to think about what she was doing, she spit in his face. He stepped back, clearly startled, wiped the spittle off his cheek and stared at her for a moment before he reached up and released her from the manacles.

“I guess you think this is some kind of game. You think you’re being defiant, but you’re not.” He pulled her into him, pressed their bodies together. Placing his foot behind her ankles he tripped her, dropping her to the mat. He fell on top of her and ground his groin against hers. Held her arms above her head with one hand and reached down with the other to violate her, most of his hand inside her.

“This is no fucking
game
, Zoey. Funtime is over. I’ve had it with your bullshit.”

He removed his hand and wiped it on his pants. To the men who had raped her, he said, “Take her to Room Four. I’ll be there shortly.”

Room Four? Her mind raced back to the signs on the doors—and she remembered Room Four, because it was marked with something other than a number.

Room Four had been marked
Punishment
.

A screaming and kicking Zoey was dragged out of Room One.

Chapter 5

T
hey dragged her down the hall by her wrists because her legs refused to function. After what she had been through, the rape and torture and humiliation, the idea that something worse was waiting for her in Room Four paralyzed her.

“Please,” she sobbed as they struggled to haul her down the corridor. They stopped, but just long enough to try to force her to stand. On her knees she wailed, begged them to stop. They snagged her wrists and hauled her on her stomach.

Room Four was the next door over.

“Stop.”

The men turned toward the voice.

James approached, hand on his hip. “Maybe she’s learned her lesson this time.”

Zoey nodded, wiped her runny nose on the back of her wrist.

Slumped on the floor, barely aware of her nudity, feeling like a death-row prisoner pardoned at the last minute.

James tossed a T-shirt at her and then knelt beside her. “Go get cleaned up. Report back to me at noon, in the cafeteria. Do you understand what that means? You have an hour and twelve minutes. Would you like to guess what will happen if you’re a minute late?”

She started sobbing.

He stood up, laughed. “Exactly. Now go. Get out of here.”

She scrambled to her feet. One of the men showed her to the bathroom. The tiled floor felt good against her throbbing flesh. She drew her legs up, wrapped her arms around her knees and hugged them, sobbing. Sat like that for a while, keenly aware of the time, the clock above the door clicking off the seconds. She had no intention of being late.

On wobbly legs she stood, staring at her face in the mirror, fingertips tracing the outline of rough, red patches and blotches, wrinkles where just two days ago there hadn’t been any. Her blue eyes were puffy from crying, her nose red and sore. Bruises tattooed on her jawline where she had been roughly handled. She examined her body, touched her battered, tender breasts. Swollen, raw labia, vagina alive with burning pain. Using a stack of paper towels she moistened under the tap, she gently wiped between her legs and down her thighs, cleaning away streaks of blood and sperm. The T-shirt that she pulled on again stretched to her knees.

Eleven forty-five. She gave herself lead time and headed back to the cafeteria.

Women like the living dead ambled past her in the corridor, their eyes downcast, their mouths knit tightly shut. The cafeteria was filling fast. She glanced around at the women, their bodies covered in bruises and blood. They seemed strangely calm, as ifthis was part of a routine, as if they were used to it. Once inside they relaxed, smiled, chatted easily with one another.

James showed up promptly at noon. Seated several feet away from the door, Zoey overheard him asking the guard stationed there if everyone was in attendance.

The guard, sporting a blackjack and a whip, nodded. “Much better, ladies,” he said to the roomful of women. “No problems. Just the way I like it.”

Women smiled, as if grateful for this snippet of praise. Others

swallowed, visibly nervous. Zoey could almost hear their hearts beating.

“Assignments after lunch, as usual.” He looked directly at Zoey. “I suggest you all be prompt.”

After being rushed through a food service line, Zoey took a seat with a small group of women.

The woman across from her brushed her cropped orange hair out of her eyes and dropped her fork against the plate. “You’re new. We’re allowed to talk to you now. I’m Lisa.”

“I’m Zoey.” She pulled apart a slice of wheat bread. “So what the hell’s going on? What is this place?”

Lisa smiled sadly, the large purple bruise on her cheek stretching. Dots of blood were spattered along her arm. “It’s hell, Zoey. We’re in hell.”

The women within hearing distance nodded.

Lisa picked up her fork and poked the contents of her tray. “They do experiments here. They say it’s for research.”

“Everyone in this place is … big,” Zoey said. “You know?”

Lisa nodded. “They seem to think it’s a fair price for the torture they put us through. They call it an extreme weight loss method and James believes he’s doing us and the world a service.”

“You’re kidding …” Zoey said. What little appetite she’d had was gone. “What sort of experiments?” Her breath quickened, not really wanting to hear Lisa’s answer.

She shook her head, her skin tone losing pigment until she was the shade of baby powder. “You’ll see. I’m sorry, but you’ll see. Just do what they tell you, Zoey. It makes it easier. Do what they say and maybe they won’t …”

“Won’t what?”

But Lisa didn’t answer.

On her way out the door, the guard with the whip and the clipboard grabbed Zoey’s wrist and looked at the leather bracelet. “Report to Room Two. You have five minutes.”

Zoey glanced at the bracelet, noticed the number stamped into the leather.

“I’d suggest you haul your ass. Wouldn’t be smart for you to be late again.”

Whatever they were planning, she couldn’t take any more. Her groin was an inferno, tender and bloated; she could barely walk. The thought of more of the same was too much to handle.

Zoey slowly approached Room Two. No sign on the door other than the number, no indication of what might be inside. Unlocked, the knob turned easily in her trembling hand. She wondered why they bothered with doors at all. Probably to keep sound out. Or in.

“Right on time,” a man said, and this time it wasn’t James.

The room was small, adorned with chains and cuffs suspended from walls, the lighting dark and moody, the smell musky and heavy, ingrained, living in the leather and wood of the tools and furniture inside. Many of the cuffs were already in use, women naked and hanging, or propped against walls. Full breasts and fuller bodies, bruises and cuts and scratches like erratic tattoos.

The guard approached her. A few inches taller than Zoey and more than a few pounds lighter, built like a biker or swimmer. His brown hair was neatly trimmed in an almost bowl shape on his head.

“I’m Tony,” he said, and before she could answer him, added, “Shirt off.” He bypassed her, as if speaking to her had been an afterthought

She licked her lips, took a breath, pulled off her shirt. Held it in a ball in front of her chest.

He came back and said, “I’ll try to go easy on you, but I do have a few routines that are mandatory.” She opened her mouth to respond but he cut her off. “I don’t want to hear it. No talking. Come with me.”

She followed him across the room, passing women being whipped, others being slapped and paddled. Strangely quiet, eyes closed, the impact of their pain apparent on their strained faces, bodies laced with puckered scars and purple, dribbling lacerations.

In the middle of the room, like the center ring in a sideshow display, a woman was strapped to a device the likes of which Zoey had never seen before. Had never imagined. Her back supported by a padded bench, her body upright, she was tied spread-eagle, her arms locked behind her back. The chair was mechanical and dipped forward with agonizing slowness, impaling her on an oversized phallus, pushing her onto it fully and then slowly pulling her back out. The woman’s eyes were open but weren’t focused on anything in particular; had in fact a dead glaze about them, a woman who had lived through one trauma too many and had given up.

Tony saw where Zoey’s attention was riveted. “That’s the rape chair,” he said, taking her wrist. “She’s going to be there for a while.”

They stopped in front of a pommel horse, leather covered, about three and a half feet high from where it was anchored to the floor. Two men, holding whips and leather straps. Another woman Zoey recognized from the cafeteria—she thought her name was Marie—waited as well, her head slightly cocked, body visibly trembling as if somehow in this murky heat she felt cold.

The one with the whip grabbed Zoey’s arm and pushed her face-first into the pommel horse. She’d seen this piece of gymnastics equipment before in the Olympics, had even seen it in high-school gym class ten years earlier. This one was similar, lower to the floor than the ones used by gymnasts, it seemed, but the same bullet shape.

“Bend over,” he said, and she did. Grabbed the rings in the center of the horse and laid between them. Submission didn’t come easily for her, and the anger burned her cheeks, made her want to reach back and rip his throat out. He gently kicked her feet farther apart. She clutched the rings but the other guard took her wrists and directed them straight out over her head.

Flanking her were Marie and Lisa. They were told to stretch across the horse, lying on either side of Zoey, their arms stretched toward her legs. The hilt of the bullwhip was dragged along Zoey’s back, up and down the length of her legs, between her thighs, trailed along the outer edges of her swollen labia. She shuddered as it was forced between her vaginal lips, as it slightly penetrated her cunt. Sweat popped out on her forehead, and her stomach flipped. He pulled it out, and she could sense him moving around behind her.